I just can't stand it when people say "Ding". Never could, never will. I don't remember what game it started in, but I sure wish it would stop. There is nothing more annoying than playing your favorite MMOG and someone announces "Ding" to the entire guild or alliance or virtual animal population. What is the purpose? Self-gratification? Acknowledgment that you are still there, grinding away? You know if I want to know your level, I can look on the guild list. WAR even has a scrolling announcement page that notes it! That's handy! But the dings continue. Whats worse than ding is the obligatory flood of spam which follows... grats! congrats! Gratz! Gtz! blah blah ad nauseum. Flooding out any of the useful chat I was just reading at the moment it happened. Some even say 'g' because they're too lazy to type out the short version of congratulations. Does the number of letters in the response represent how much they really care? g! You've just managed to do what every other player does repeatedly over and over and over again. Whenever I see 'ding' I can't help but think of some kid being toilet trained. "Look Dad I went in the potty!" That's great son, congrats! Now do it again tomorrow." People level all the time! I bet in the time I typed this, millions of characters around the world 'dinged'. It's not that big a deal! I don't hate those of you who like to say "ding". I'm very happy that you enjoy the game and I count some of you among my dearest friends. I just really hate it when you say 'ding'. Hey, doesn't the word 'ding' sound really dumb now?
Yes, that's the point of those games, people find that pleasant for a number of reasons. Preaching to a gaming community that common gaming culture aspects annoy you is kind of like preaching atheism to the choir isn't it? Regardless of who's right and who finds what annoying, in the end people are always going to have their opinions and customs, and clearly if the majority of people accept something then you should at least be tolerant to it, even if you personally don't like it and would like to see it change.
The term Ding came from evercrack I believe, since it made a ding noise whenever you leveled. And honestly, once you hit like lvl 40 or so in WoW saying ding acts as sort of a way to let people know that you are actually moving forward and such. I personally only say 'ding' or 'woo i leveled' at the epic levels of 40, 50, 60, 70 and 2.
For those that would like to hear the ding sound from EQ, you can dl it here... I dug it up for the purposes of this thread ding.mp3
As a guild leader myself, I enjoy the "ding" from my members. It shows that they're still working hard at trying to hit 70 before WotLK instead of wasting their time. Plus, I've always seen it as just a fun way to say "hey guys, up one more!"
I 100% agree, rav. It's obnoxious. The only acceptable time to announce a level gain is when you hit the top level.
I completely disagree with that. One point worth announcing is 'I CAN HAS MOUNT!' but in less obnoxious terms. Also, on a first char, getting a new armor class (lvl 40), hitting 58 and going to OL and, IMO, the levels between 60-70 (just because those levels actually take some effort, unless you use the refer a friend thing if that applies for 60-70 as well). Also, I appreciate it when it happens in G chat if nothing's been said in a while... makes you feel like you're playing with friends when there is actually green chat going (and it not being flaming, or completely immature crap like spouting out Chuck Norris jokes, or being cancer (see; 4channers) etc.)
OK, you convinced me. I'll concede that announcing significant level gains is an ok thing in smaller tight-knit guilds. But I still think that in the case of WAR, for example, 200 people announcing that they hit 10 or 30 or even getting their mount is annoying.
Then you are bothered far to easily. If the simple "Hey guys! level 20!" is irritating, I'd hate to see what really sets you off. It's a simple line of text. Ignore it. Plus, people like announcing their accomplishments. Even if you think it is insignificant, to them its an achievement. Congratulate them, don't QQ, and move on.
I don't think it should be done for every level but when you get to the longer drawn out levels, think mini dings in daoc or hell levels in EQ, its nice to reach them and generally people are genuinely happy for you. I know in DAOC when we hit 50 I took my RL friends out to dinner and we usually made an announcement in /as.
Okay, if someone gets to max level thats a pretty major accomplishment. I might say Congrats then. Especially if they didn't ding every level up to then. Yes. Because then I feel obligated to reply. And the same channel spam usually follows. It is good, though, when the guild leader/officers announce their arrival. Don't even get me started on "QQ"
... ok thog, I have to say... that's pretty odd. I have to compare this with RL examples because its simplest that way. I think its incredibly odd when people join up with friends and dont say hi or whatever, and this is pretty much the same scenario, except that you can scroll up if you miss something, whereas in RL you have to ask them to repeat it. Its slightly far fetched, but it gets the point across. Honestly, I find its good when people say hi, since I know I've come across several situations where i wanted to talk to someone and they log on without me noticing because of looting and completing quests and such (the master of that is definitely Shoji... until she says hi, which helps my point apparently )
the problem with ding is when people use it every level and on every alt... I dislike it too... I will "ding" at max level, and in War I did when I hit Teir2, and I will when I hit Tier3 as well to be honest as I feel those are spots I want to let people know about (I use "ding, level X" when I do it), but other then that I prefer to say something if I want to brag Like "wooo I got my mount finally" or something I also don't mind it that much if the level grind has been done for awhile but for example if a new exp pack comes out for wow and you have 100 people leveling from 70-80 honestly I have to agree that it is just too much to have people "ding" every level... I def disagree with "hi" being a bad thing on login though... It's a friend (hopfully) logging and and saying hi... it shows the guild is a friendly guild and isn't so caught up in their own thing that they just ignore their guild mates. Do you say hi when you see friends at school? or at work? I know I do
We need a forum called "asinine shit." It would be a good place for threads like this. With that out of the way... Being annoyed about people saying ding follows the same logic as many of Maddox's rants. However, unlike Maddox, you actually care that someone says it. Which probably means your spending too much time watching the chat logs and not enough time playing the game. Now, I know that many MMOs are considered interactive chat programs, but isn't that taking it a little bit too far? Think of all the leveling, profession grinding, PVPing, etc. you could have done in the time it took you to get pissed off by the fact that someone typed "ding" in chat. Hell, I consider myself to have an "average" level of patience. Following that logic I feel it would take an almost never ending bombardment of dings to actually set me off enough to write a post in a forum of people who don't care about a topic that is inline with things like whether or not squirrels should have abortion rights. But meh, I'm going to take my own advice now and gt back to mah game. I think I could have "ding'd" 67 on my warrior in the time it took me to write this post. Such a waste.